Printing Trends: Catalog Design and Use

Timing will always be an important factor when it comes to marketing. After all, what’s “in” one year will be old and tacky by the next, and that’s true for almost any publicity product. In this case, booklets and catalogs are no different, which is why understanding them can be such a major advantage. Here’s a look at the common trends in the use and design of effective catalogs.

Appealing to an audience. While catalogs have always been designed in order to sell to customers, there has never been as much focus on targeting audiences as there is now. These days you are more likely to see custom-fit catalogs aimed at certain demographics than general, free-for-all designs. It’s easier to choose the lifestyle you want people to aim for that way.

Feeding the eyes. The best catalogs you will see are really colorful and really enticing to look at. This is perhaps one of the most common strategies today, minimizing the use of words and letting the awesomeness of your products come through purely out of pictures. Hardly anyone really opens up a catalog for the reading, really.

Green catalog design. Withgrowingconcerns on environmental deterioration, the trend has shifted into greener, less wasteful catalog production. People are now more likely to approach companies that are green-certified than those still stuck in the ages when trees are plenty and there wasn’t as much pollution. It’s as simple as switching paper stock and ink or cutting the number of pages to your production. Really simple.

Not jumping into the internet. With a good majority of people now connected to the internet in some way, there has been a rapid increase through the years of online advertising coupled with a decrease in popularity of offline marketing. There are still a lot of reasons why print catalogs would win over online methods, though, one of which is that it is more concrete and more impressive than just buying a domain. Just as there is a trend towards online marketing, there are also those who choose not to.

Through the years, fads will die out and standards will be changed, and this shows just how dynamic and predictable marketing can be. Those listed above are but a few of the trends in catalog design and use, and these may not even be valid 10, 5, or even 2 years in the future. The best advice, really, is to be as flexible and versatile as you can be because then you’d be able to make catalogs fit for any era.